My April/ May 2026 Sonic Youth immersion continues- I can't enough of their music at the moment, inspired mainly reading Thurston Moore's Sonic Life and I've been going back into their 80s albums, 1986's EVOL and 1987's Sister especially.
EVOL was their third full length album and the first with Steve Shelley on drums and as much as any of their records shows them moving from a fairly full on post- punk/ noise ascetic towards some tunes that could be decribed as pop (or at least informed by pop). The altenrate tunigns and unconventional structures are still there. They never really dealt in classic rock verse/ chorus/ verse/ chorus/ middle eight/ verse/ chorus, willfully creating whatever verse and chorus structure they wanted. But there are songs on EVOL that show tunes and melodies were becoming important to them. Kim Gordon called it a 'faux goth' record.
EVOL has several songs that would qualify for a Sonic Youth best of- Shadow Of A Doubt and Starpower would both be contenders and in Expressway To Yr Skull one of their best songs, their first truly great song and one of the best of the 80s. Neil Young agreed. He called it 'a classic... incredibly good, so beautiful' and in 1990 invited them on tour (a tour that Thurston describes in detail in his memoir, their battles with the Neil Young and Crazy Horse road and sound crew a feature that pissed them off until Neil intervened).
Expressway To Yr Skull (listed as Madonna, Sean And Me on EVOL's back cover) kicks in with clanging, wrecked guitar chords, wind blasted, sunglasses and hair blown away chords. Thurston eventually sings the opening verse, Brian Wilson on bad drugs, 'We're gonna kill the California girls' and then more obliquely, 'We're gonna fire the exploding load in the milkmaid maiden head'. They build, Thurston, Kim and Lee clanging up and down the necks of their guitars, noise and atonality but still with the musicality of outsider late 60s rock. 'Mystery train', he sings nodding to Greil Marcus and Elvis, 'Three way plane/ Expressway to your skull'. They understood dynamics, the importance of tension and release, and there's a pause with the hum of amps and guitars, stretched out, before Thurston comes back in and drawls... 'to your skuuuuuuuulllll...'.
There are different versions of Expressway. This one has a long fade out that takes it over six minutes. I've added another version of the song to the end of it, doubling its running time. Belgian artist Wixal recorded a cover of Expressway in 2007, part of a seven song EP of Sonic Youth covers, that he made after seeing Sonic Youth play a gig in Leuven. You can find it at Bandcamp.
The Long Champs, a Weatherall approved Welsh cosmic/ ambient/ chug artist, took Wixal's cover and added a shimmering, padding ambient/ cosmische aura to it, sending Wixal's already blissed out cover of Sonic Youth's blasted alternative 80s art- rock into new places. I thought the two would work well as one thirteen minute piece- and happily they do.
Expressway To Yr Skull/ Expressway Long Champs Bonus Beats
Lloyd of The Long Champs has had a significant loss recently and this post is dedicated to him and to Delyth.
While being inspired by Thurston's book I pulled my copy of Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From The American Indie Underground, 1981- 1991 off the shelf, a history of D.I.Y. US indie- punk from Black Flag to Beat Happening, published in 2001. My copy is hardback and I guess bought around 2002/ 3 when it was published in the UK. I opened the front cover and the first page had a scrawl in red pen all over it, done I remembered instantly when I left the book lying around and a young Isaac picked up a pen and opened the book and doodled away. It made me jump, this sudden contact with Isaac.
When I skipped to the Sonic Youth chapter, he'd done the same over two pages there too. It made me smile- Isaac, gone four and a half years ago nearly now, scribbling over my book, suddenly there in front of me, or at least his marks were there in front of me, and the coincidence that reading Thurston Moore's book and listening to the records again had led me to this mark Isaac had made a quarter of a century ago in the Sonic Youth chapter struck me as, well, just a coincidence I guess. I could hear him speaking at that point too, a flashback, him unaware of what he'd done and laughing. Funnily, it also made me think it was pretty Sonic Youth, the home made, handwritten/ scrawled album sleeves, liner notes, gig posters and fanzines Thurston Moore was responsible for.
'We're gonna find the meaning/ Of looking good/ And stay there as long as we think we should/ Mystery train/ Three way plane/ Expressway... to your skull'
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